‘Mother’s’ Love Story Well Worth a Commitment

Jean Eustache’s monumental “The Mother and the Whore,” which receives a 25th anniversary revival today through Thursday at the Nuart with a fresh print and improved English subtitles, stands the test of time magnificently.

Any film that dares to run 216 minutes--without intermission yet--had better be worth the effort. Any film that long is bound to be wearying from time to time, but “The Mother and the Whore,” which won both a special grand jury prize and the international critics prize at Cannes in 1973, is eminently worth the commitment for the serious filmgoer.

The film is at once of its time--simultaneously the fullest flowering of the French New Wave and the shattering of its male chauvinist tendencies--and utterly timeless in its perception of love, sex and human nature. Crucial to that timeless quality is the simplicity of its style. Not for Eustache were the visual flourishes of Godard, Truffaut, et al; instead his was an uncluttered directness marked by an exquisite yet understated sense of composition and camera movement.

The play of light and shadow in cameraman Pierre Lhomme’s images attests to the glories of the black-and-white cinema that has all but vanished on today’s screens. Time may well validate Cahiers du Cinema’s declaration that “The Mother and the Whore” is the greatest French film of the ‘70s.

Jean-Pierre Leaud has been acting in films for 40 years now, since he played the adolescent delinquent of Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” and this film may well be the most important of his career; the same goes for his co-stars. That’s saying a lot when you consider Leaud’s remarkable collaboration with Truffaut and that he made seven films for Godard. As for his role in this film, it is a matter of quantity as well as quality: It has got to have just about the most lines of any role in film history.

You have the feeling that Leaud poured all of himself into bringing his Alexandre alive. In his late 20s, Alexandre is a handsome, dapper man with luminous dark eyes and an engaging, quirky manner. He is a brilliant, whimsical intellectual, compelling storyteller and world-class talker with strong opinions on the arts and human behavior. He is a full-time dilettante, his firm proclamations belying a shaky sense of identity and self-worth.

He’s also a practiced connoisseur of women, spending a substantial part of his life at Deux Magots and other Left Bank landmarks. He lives with Marie (Bernadette Lafont), proprietor of a chic dress shop. Brisk, tart Marie, several years older than he, supports him and indulges his peccadilloes because she loves him.

When we meet Alexandre, he is trying to win back the lovely Gilberte (Isabelle Weingarten), whom he had ditched. She has now found someone else and won’t be budged, although even now she may still love Alexandre more than her fiance. He is therefore in a moment of despair when Veronika (Francoise Lebrun), a beautiful nurse of Polish descent, catches his eye. A highly sensual woman accustomed to giving freely of her sexual favors, she ends up falling hard for Alexandre, a romantic who takes pleasure in courting her, turning on his wit and charm full force, until she’s all but begging him to take her to bed.

Accustomed to Alexandre’s casual affairs, Marie struggles to maintain her composure and detachment when confronted with Veronika’s presence. Jealousy, however, serves only to heat up Marie’s own relationship with Alexandre.

Most filmmakers wouldn’t need nearly four hours to work out the eternal triangle, but then most filmmakers don’t have the profound vision of Eustache, who uses every second of his daunting running time to explore what makes these three tick--Alexandre and and Veronika, especially. In the film’s great finale, Eustache shatters the shallowness of Alexandre and Marie’s trendy lives, and affirms ringingly that sex without love is ultimately nothing.

“The Mother and the Whore,” which refers to the way men so often classify women, is a bold realigning of the ancient moral compass, an affirmation of eternal values and priorities. But sadly, Eustache, who made eight other films, committed suicide in November 1981, at the age of 43.

* Unrated. Times guidelines: Although there is some nudity and sex in the film, there is much clinical discussion of it, and the film’s themes are decidedly adult.

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‘The Mother and the Whore’

(La Maman et la putain)

Jean-Pierre Leaud: Alexandre

Bernadette Lafont: Marie

Francoise Lebrun: Veronika

Isabelle Weingarten: Gilberte

An Artificial Eye presentation. Writer-director Jean Eustache. Executive producer Pierre Cottrell. Cinematographer Pierre Lhomme. Editors Eustache, Denise de Casablanca. In French, with English subtitles. Running time: 3 hours, 36 minutes.

* Exclusively at the Nuart, 11272 Santa Monica Blvd., West Los Angeles, (310) 478-6379.